NARRATIVE GENRE AND STRUCTURE

The first component of L2 narrative competence is the mastery of narrative structures conventional for the target language. Narrative structure is commonly considered in terms of the following elements singled out by the sociolinguist William Labov, based on a large sample of elicited personal narratives:

Elements of Narrative Structure

abstract

orientation (time, place, character identification)

complicating action (what happened and how)

evaluation

resolution

coda

(see xxxxxxx this section in the Narrative Tasks and Activities for definitions of each component, created specifically for student use).

Foreign language students are often unaware of the fact that speakers of different languages may differ in how they structure their narratives and that speakers whose narrative styles diverge from the mainstream standard, or from the standard adopted by their interlocutors, are often perceived as lacking narrative competence.

For instance, oral narratives in the Anglo-American tradition favor a topic-centered chronological structure that focuses on a single event, proceeding from the complicating action to the resolution. In contrast, Japanese narratives may combine two or three similar incidents into a single story, while speakers of Spanish highly value performative topic-associating narratives that combine things that happened at different times and places, and to different people. Due to lack of awareness of cross-linguistic differences, topic-associating narratives of Spanish or Japanese speakers may be perceived as incoherent "leapfrogging" by Anglo-American interlocutors who are used to a different narrative structure and expect stories about a single event.

Speakers of different languages may also differ in terms of emphasis on particular narrative components. For instance, conventional Western narratives require a resolution, while in Maori stories, the conflict is created but not necessarily resolved. Thus, Maori stories appear incomplete to the ears of white New Zealanders waiting for a resolution and a coda. Differences may also exist within particular genres. Traditional Western folktales, for example, posit a goal for the main character to achieve, while Japanese folktales do not require such a goal.

Studies of L2 learners' narratives conducted in the Labovian framework demonstrate that, when the narrative structures of the L1 and L2 are similar, learners exhibit appropriate narrative structure in the target language stories and when the narrative structures of L1 and L2 are dissimilar, learners can acquire some new structures. What they often lack are appropriate linguistic markers of particular narrative structures and functions.

After examining the natural data which we collected, we reached similar conclusions. Both native Russian speakers and American learners of Russian told fictional narratives that exhibited the traditional Labovian structure. Native speakers were, however, more skillful than the learners in marking particular components of the structure, and in particular narrative openings and closings.

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Openings and Closings:

One observation we made was that native speakers of Russian use a variety of narrative abstracts to open their retellings. These abstracts include,

phrases commonly used in story-telling	"Это история о том, как ...", "Дело происходит..."
phrases used in retellings of movies and TV shows	"Фильм начинается с того, что...", "Здесь показано как..."
phrases that specifically introduce the movies in question	"Первый фильм был... од/одна из серий о мистере Бине", "Это фильм про мистера Бина", "Этот фильм про человека", "В первом фильме я видел мужчину..."

A few of the American learners’ narratives also start with recognizable abstracts - such as

"Действие происходит в Америке",
"Это был очень странный маленький фильм".

Other learners begin with direct translations of the English "There was" that are inappropriate in Russian. Examples from our data include

"Была девушка",
"Сначала было просто как одна женщина"
"...есть женщина, она шла...".

The majority of the learners’ narratives skip the abstracts and open up with "orientations" telling us who was doing what and where, such as "Женщина она шла по улице".

While some Russian speakers also begin their stories with orientations, the presence of abstracts differentiates more competent and accomplished narratives from less competent ones. What this discrepancy makes apparent is that in the presence of sufficient linguistic skills to tell the stories in question, the learners simply lack specific narrative resources. In the classroom, teachers could discuss the advantages of opening the narrative with an abstract versus an orientation, they could also introduce learners to common attention-getters and abstracts used to insert their stories into the conversation (e.g., "Со мной произошла похожая история", "Представляешь, что случилось".

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Orientations function similarly in native speakers' and learners' narratives. Both groups describe the place and introduce the character through one or more clauses:

"Молодая девушка возвращается домой",
"Красивая женщина с черными кудрявыми волосами идет по улице",
"Человек подьезжает к гаражу",
"Мистер Бин приехал на заправку,"
"Сначала господин Бин, господин Фасоль, подьезжает к шлагбауму".

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Two differences between native speakers and learners in our language data:

(1) American learners of Russian are the only ones who sometimes begin their narratives with deictic pronouns, without introducing the character first - "Сначала мы видим, как она переходит через мост", and "Но он хочет выезжать". Such ambiguous orientations could be productively used in classroom discussions of proper character introduction in narratives.

(2) The learners also provide less details in their orientations – native speakers clearly have more resources at their disposal to provide detailed descriptions of the characters' appearances and surroundings. We will return to this issue in the next section.

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While abstracts and expanded orientations appear optional in our corpus, all of the narratives include narrative clauses that introduce the complicating action. Of the three films, the one about Mr. Bean in the parking lot offers the clearest example of a complicating action, namely, the main character’s inability to leave the parking lot without paying and his unwillingness to pay.

Some native speakers introduce this complicating action in the abstract:

"Этот фильм про человека, который захотел, как бы, в маленьком смысле преступить закон",
Это история о том, как мистер Бин не мог выехать со стоянки".

Most native speakers, however, produce a set of narrative clauses where the conflict is signaled through the uses of a coordinating conjunction 'но' sometimes followed by a pause:

"Мужчина, очевидно, куда-то торопится, и ему необходимо выехать из подземного гаража.Но… автоматический шлагбаум его не хочет выпускать...",
"Один человек хочет выехать со стоянки,но ему надо было заплатить...",
"Он пытается выехать,но так как у него это не получается...",
"Мужчина хочет выехать со стоянки, но осознает, когда собирается, чтобы открыть, открылись ворота, поднялся шлагбаум, что он не платил за стоянку 16 долларов,"
" Сначала водитель машины, ну, вставил в автомат билет, для того, чтобы выехать, чтобы открылся шлагбаум.Но он не открылся...".

More skillful learners also use this approach, setting up a conflict between the character’s intentions and the parking lot requirements, e.g.

"Мистер Бин хотел уехать из гаража, но это стоит, это стоит шестьдесят долларов",
"но он не хотел платить",
"ему надо придумать какой-то прием, чтобы обмануть штуку, которая выдает билеты",
"Он зачем-то хотел перехитрить систему".

Learners would benefit from awareness-raising exercises that could help them identify complicating action in these and other stories and from exercises that draw their attention to linguistic means of introducing complicating action (e.g., и тогда; и в этот момент; а в это время; и тут мы видим, что).

What we see overall is that the learners are at their best when producing narrative clauses, and at their weakest when opening and closing narratives. Native speakers of Russian end the narratives either with the resolution, or with a resolution and a coda, accompanied by the falling intonation. The resolution is commonly the last action,

"Блондинка, ничего не поняв, осталась стоять на месте",
"Это закончилось, к сожалению, аварией",
"и таким образом выехал из гаража",
"он выехал с парковки, так и не заплатив",
"И затем он уехал из этого бассейна".

Some speakers also add a coda, e.g. "Все", "Ну в общем все, вот пожалуй и все", "На этом фильм заканчивается", "Зато он выехал, все у него получилось".

Learners mostly end with resolutions, describing final actions or narrators’ evaluations, e.g.

"И вторая женщина сидела",
"И подруга остается, она уже в кресле, смотрит телевизор в конце",
"И она обратно берет письмо и уходит",
"Он ждал, ждал, ждал, и уехал, и не заплатил",
"Ей было обидно, и после этого, поэтому это все, не знаю, что еще",
"И она сидела в кресле".

A few attempt to create more formal codas, such as

"и все был конце фильма",
"и вот и фильм закончился",
"и это уже конец фильма",
"Все",
"И это все",
"И я думаю, что это было все",
"Ну в общем все".

It appears that they are unaware of common expressions, such as "на этом фильм заканчивается" or "на этом история заканчивается".

And there are a few learners in the corpus appear to have no narrative closings at all in their repertoires and produce rather incongruous final sentences, such as "Ну она в брюках и, а так значит это или суббота или она не работает".

Suggestions for how to address these gaps and promote advanced narrative skills:

Noticing activities - where students analyze the structure of conventionalized narratives in the target language and notice linguistic markers of particular narrative components, such as abstracts (e.g., Мне это напомнило; Ты себе и представить не можешь, что вчера произошло), complicating actions (e.g., вдруг откуда ни возьмись) or codas (e.g., Вот так все и закончилось) (see also exercises 1 through 11);

Sorting and sequencing activities - where students are asked to put disconnected parts of a narrative (either pictorial or verbal) into a logical sequence, while paying particular attention to the use of appropriate linguistic markers of structural components and transitions between them;

Transforming activities - such as "Choose your own adventure" or "Finish this story", that are particularly useful for practicing specific elements of narrative structure, such as complication, resolution, or a coda.

Consciousness-raising activities - where students read or listen to narratives that diverge in structure or genre from those they are familiar with and are asked to analyze the differences. Consider this ecample: Contemporary Russian society, for instance, favors complaint stories or litanies, which are followed by similar stories from the interlocutors. In the US, complaints appear more frequently as a speech act and are commonly followed by problem-solving solutions from the interlocutors. An American anthropologist Nancy Ries (1997), who studied Russian litanies, recalls that her attempts to offer such solutions to Russian friends were usually met with incomprehension or simply ignored. Importantly, we use this example not to advocate a forced production of litanies in the classroom, but to argue that classrooms should devote sufficient attention to students' interpretive and interlocutory skills. This means that at minimum students should be taught to recognize and interpret complaints and litanies as legitimate stories and to behave appropriately as interlocutors, providing adequate back-channeling and abstaining from offering solutions and suggestions, unless specifically asked to do so.

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